PopCap Games, Inc.

Racing cars around, bashing into each other, throwing yourself or your friends off of the edge. This week you can play a fiendishly fun yet deviously simple car game, or scroll down and read about some strategic roguelikes where you must destroy your enemies and try to survive.

If neither of these ideas take your fancy, I ve also been playing an astoundingly adorable platformer about a baby bird that is learning to sing, and one about a ghost longing to be a great knight and a hero for the kingdom. Each of these games contain within them their own unique charm and adventure – read on and find a game for you to explore. (more…)

Sometimes it feels like everyone and their dog is jumping on the open-world bandwagon, but pairing the free-wheeling cartoon pirate adventures of One Piece with a world that lets you bounce, swing and spin your way freely from fight to fight feels like a savvy call.

Enter One Piece: World Seeker, studio Ganbarion’s ambitious-looking project to drag the long-running anime and manga franchise into modern gaming relevance. Within, we’ve got a little bit of (subtitled, assuming you turn on captions) chatter from director Koji Nakajima, interspersed with a few moments of intriguing gameplay footage.

When we last reported on the Kickstarter-funded System Shock remake from Night Dive Studios, all sounded relatively well, and the team were gearing up to expand the scope of their plans, from making a straight remake into something more akin to a modern-day reboot for the series.

Unfortunately, greater scope means a greater budget and investments in both time and manpower. After additional publisher support to back up this new vision didn’t come through, Night Dive are ‘taking a step back’ to reassess the project and get it back more in line with their original Kickstarter promises, as detailed in this (public) backer update from Stephen Kick, Night Dive CEO.

Sometimes you get a hankering to turn the Anime up to 11, and sometimes you need to go even further. Arc System Works, still sizzling with success after Dragon Ball FighterZ, are gearing up for a PC release of Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, a mashup of their long-running Blazblue series, Persona 4 Arena (a spinoff of the excellent JRPG), the indie-developed Under Night In-Birth and American-made pseudo-anime RWBY.

While I had been worried that Arc System Works had lost their way and were planning on pricing the crossover fighting game to death, their recent announcement of the release date and pricing structure makes the planned 20-character season pass sound a little more reasonable than I was expecting.

It took a lot of tactical face-shooting to get here, but the virtual bloodbath that is the Six Invitational is in its final days. Down to just 8 teams, the final few matches will be playing out over the course of today and the weekend.

At the time of writing, Brazil’s Faze Clan are in a very close-fought match against US-based Evil Geniuses. The high stakes match is being broadcast live via Ubisoft’s official Twitch stream, and if the action unfolding tickles your fancy, there’s a free weekend for Rainbow Six Siege running alongside the tournament.

Welcome back to Spawn Point, where we take an element from the world of gaming and explain what it is, why it’s worth your time and how you can dip your toes in and get involved. Last time, Brendan gave you a 101 course in Final Fantasy XII, a JRPG that recently got spruced up for PC twelve years after its original launch on PlayStation 2. This time, however, I’m going to be looking at JRPGs as a whole, discussing what they are and which ones you should try your hand at first if you’ve never played one before.

For the five of you that own an HTC Vive, I’ve got some bad news for you. At the end of March, the price of HTC’s Viveport subscription service is going up. In the UK, 6.99/month will become 8.99/month on March 22nd, with a similar price increase taking place across all 60+ countries where Viveport’s available.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to avoid it if you’ve yet to sign up to it. All you need to do is become a subscriber before March 22nd and HTC have promised you’ll be able to keep the 6.99 sub price for at least the rest of 2018. The same rule applies to all current Viveport subscribers too.

Like a lot of online games, EVE Online has a problem with botters – players who create automated bots to slave away in the asteroid mines. That problem only got worse since the MMO introduced its free-to-play ‘Alpha Clone’ accounts. Pressure from fans has led to this recent update on the EVE Online blog, in which creators CCP outline the state of the botting problem, and what they’re doing about it. Short version: they’re getting harsher.